Consequential Strangers

Making Time for Connections--or Not

Melinda Blau — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:47:08 +0000

Recently, psychologist and author Bella de Paulo, posted an interesting question about consequential strangers in an article on this site, "Do You Want the People on the Periphery of Your Life to Become More Consequential." (Disclosure: She didn’t just happen on the book. I interviewed her about her groundbreaking research on lying for the “Downside” chapter of my book, Consequential Strangers!)

The piece is worth reading. Professor de Paulo makes some fascinating points about what she calls "intensive coupling"--the traditional view that those in a committed relationship must "be all" to one another, rather than relying on friends and acquaintances to meet some of their needs. Having written about the alternatives in her own book, Singled Out, she embraces the central message of Consequential Strangers: to value the connections beyond family and close friends.

I was taken by the authors' arguments for many reasons, but most of all, because these are the very points my colleagues and I have been developing–only with regard to friends rather than acquaintances. So now I like Consequential Strangers for another reason. I think that in a big, broad sense, it is a sign of our times.

But later in the piece, de Paulo also expresses personal reservations against having too many consequential strangers:

Personally, I do not want so many of the people on the periphery of my life acting as if they are not actually strangers. Blau and Fingerman described approvingly the "5-10 rule" of check-ins at Westin hotels: "Spend at least five minutes and walk ten steps with each guest." I read that and made a mental note to avoid Westin hotels. When I've finally arrived at a hotel, weary and hungry, after a cross-country flight, a delay at the baggage claim, and a van to the hotel, I really do not want my check-in extended to five minutes. (Now if you want to offer me a cookie, as some hotels now do, that's a different story.)

Fair enough, I say. I appreciate Professor de Paulo’s honesty. In fact, I’ve heard it before. Statements like, “I don’t need any more people in my life” and “Who has the time?” often crop up in discussions about consequential strangers. And my personal favorite: “I don’t want to have conversations with strangers.”

My response is two-fold: First, of all, no one says you have to have conversations with strangers–and it’s not "strangers" we’re talking about. (See Getting Stuck on the Word Stranger? for more on this.) The idea is to become aware of the people who are already on the periphery of your social life. If you're like most Americans, they far outnumber your intimates. We spend the bulk of our time with them, and so it makes sense to value them.

Second, and most important, we don’t need a lot of consequential strangers, just variety. All you need is a sampling of the diverse types of people you naturally encounter as you make your way through the day--during your commute, when you are at school or work, wherever you pray or play, and when you need a repair or any kind of assistance. Each of your connections is different from you and probably different from one another. Their backgrounds, experiences, and personal qualities broaden your own repertoire and make you realize that there are other perspectives. They're likely to show you ways to think and approaches to problems that you might never have considered.

So don’t stay at the Westin if you don’t want. And don’t worry about racking up huge numbers of consequential strangers. Just make the best of the ones you already have. You'll be surprised at all the cookies you'll collect.

Will Pink Cleats Help NFL Players Win the Game?

Melinda Blau — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:10:32 +0000

DeAngelo Williams was totally in favor of the NFL supporting Breast Cancer Awareness this month. His mother, Sandra Hill, was diagnosed five years ago. Her three sisters died of the disease. But Williams wasn’t interested in sporting a pair of hot pink gloves, shoes, or a sweatband, or mopping his brow with a pink towel to spark awareness. Did he think real men don't wear pink? No, the Carolina Panthers running back wanted pink cleats. “If you have a great cleat and a firm foot in the ground, you can do anything,” he told the New York Times. If cleats are such a big part of a player’s game, in his pink cleats, Williams might play even better, because he’ll be out there on the field for a cause bigger than himself--bigger even than the team. He’ll be playing for the entire collective of women with breast cancer.

Many social scientist today look at “the self” as broader concept, an identity shaped not only by our individual experiences but also by our relationships, mostly our consequential strangers. Each of us, of course, has a “personal” self that strives to be unique. But we are also “extended” selves, who seek connection and strive to be part of something bigger--beyond our selves, beyond our loved ones.

When Williams takes to the field in his neon-pink cleats, he will be playing for his mother but also for other women battling breast cancer. William has also set up a foundation to raise awareness–and money. He is playing, therefore, to eradicate the disease and to subsidize women who can’t afford treatment. In short, he is not acting out of self interest, but other interest. Psychologist Marilynn Brewer notes that when “the boundaries of the self are redrawn” in this more expansive way and particular roles are “activated” by being a member of a group or collective, those roles in turn become more important to us. We want to behave in a way that reflects well on the group.

Social movements–for good or for evil--are propelled by foot soldiers who are willing to put themselves at risk. They perform extraordinary feats because they believe in a particular mission or goal. So why wouldn’t these same dynamics play out on the football field? Williams’ extended self can be more courageous, play harder than usual, perhaps even run faster.

Of course, other NFL players will wearing hot pink gear during October. But it’s not about the outfit; it's about intention. It's a good bet that those committed to the cause will have an edge on guys who don't feel like they're part of the campaign. At the very least, players who are wearing pink to honor someone they know will probably feel better about themselves.

Social Isolation "Worsens Cancer"

Melinda Blau — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:59:52 +0000

Yesterday, that headline was picked up by the BBC News, Wall Street Journal, and Science Daily, and will undoubtedly continue travel through the blogosphere for weeks to come. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and reported in the journal Cancer Prevention Research (click here for the abstract) began six years ago when a team, led by a cancer specialist and a biobehavioral psychologist, raised two groups of mice that were genetically predisposed to develop breast cancer. Some lived with other mice and some lived alone. After the same amount of time, the isolated mice grew larger breast cancer tumors. Mice in the "stressful environment"--isolation--also behaved differently and had higher stress hormone levels.

This research is consistent with the a range of studies epidemiological studies done over the last several decades on social isolation, "social integration"--having lots of different kinds of people in your life, not just intimates--and the "stress-buffering" effect of social support on humans as well as mice. As we report in Consequential Strangers, mothers in Guatemala who were paired with a doula, a "birthing companion" who was neither husband nor close friend, had fewer complications in childbirth than women who had to go it alone. They were also more responsive to their babies. Other studies show that the mere act of describing a difficult even in detail can ease stress over time. Even though no one knows precisely how social factors work on physiology, doesn't it make sense that going through our own or a loved one's crisis requires support? It's often a matter of survival: In another study, when rats who had been previously given electric shocks were returned to the shock box, they naturally showed signs of fear. But the fear response--rapid breathing and higher temperature--was not as strong when another rat was present, particularly one who hadn't been shocked.

What are the practical implications of these studies? You're more likely to stay healthy if you have social support--loved ones and casual relations. When you're sick, the kind of help you need often comes from an outsider--a consequential stranger--because you and your family are living in a shock box. People who lack this kind of support are clearly at greater risk of disease.

So Many Consequential Strangers, So Little Time!

Melinda Blau — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:16:12 +0000

Having just published a new book--an event nowadays that requires authors to establish a "web presence" (read Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you can broadcast yourself!), I was drawn to a post by Alexandra Levit on mashable.com. (If you're not familiar with it, mashable is a website with a wealth of information about social networking, so popular that it now outranks CNN on Twitter, according to one recent study.) I thought that Levit's advice was very good and added my own two cents in a comment, which naturally reflects my last three years of research and writing--not to mention all the messages and emails I'm now getting:

I think of sites in terms of their family/friend-to-CS ratio. Consequential strangers (CS) are people outside your intimate circles--and they comprise the bulk of our daily encounters. Our intimates know what we know, whereas our CS take us "beyond the familiar." In each of my social network sites, I have many, many more CS (even though the site calls them "friends"), and on Twitter, strangers as well. True,Facebook does has a good number of family, friends, rediscovered friends as well as consequential strangers from the past.

One of the suggestions in Levit's how-to was "set boundaries"--reserve certain sites for family and real friends, and others for business contacts--but, as I wrote in my comment...

...it's too late for me! The best I can do is restrict my online social time, And that's getting harder the more connections I make--even on the sites I regularly visit.

On Facebook I now have my "friends" (who are mostly CS, with a smattering of family and close friends thrown in--a mirror of my real life social scene), and I also check in on the CS group I started. I've been suggesting that people ask their friends and CS to join that group, and overnight we picked up more members. I like that, and it's great to connect, but the more people I connect with, the harder it is to stay connected, but I'm determined to at least try. It is, after all, the point of my new book!

On Twitter, for instance, whenever someone follows me, I contact them, asking, how did you find me and why are you following me? I don't bother when the "person" seems more like a bot, or when the photo is an obvious come-on. (Come on, really--do men actually follow anyone with big breasts?) Many don't bother answer, I think because everyone's out there to rack up numbers. Or maybe they're too busy posting themselves. A widely-reported recent survey found that at least a quarter of American adults who use the Internet are "creators"--they're blogging, making videos, posting stories on line. Who has time to say hello? But I, perhaps naively, want to connect. And others apparently do, too. I've met some really interesting CS that way, who introduce me to new ideas or just say something wonderful about themselves that tugs at my heart. Keep 'em comin' I say--that's what consequential strangers do for us.

I may eat those words, of course, because I'm already spending more time than I ever imagined tweeting, blogging, answering emails, looking at other people's links, reading other people's blogs, watching their videos. Only time, or my lack of it, will tell. Ergo, my new bumper sticker:

So many consequential strangers, so little time.

Can Your Colleague’s Husband’s Sister Make You Fat? (How Our Social Convoys Protect Us)

Melinda Blau — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:41:07 +0000

We may not be judged by the company we keep, but we're certainly influenced by it. That's a theme that runs through Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter. My collaborator, Karen Fingerman, who coined the term consequential strangers, makes the point that people on the periphery influence our behavior as much as intimates do-and our book draws from many different strands of research to explain why this is the case. But according to the advance promotion for an upcoming book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,we are also influenced by people we don't know:

"Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Drs. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide." [Excerpt of the press release for the book]

Over the last several years, the Harvard researchers have received widespread attention for their contention that health issues "run" in social networks. But could someone you don't know "make" you fat? It certainly gets our attention. At least two researchers ("Study Contradicts Earlier Reports That Some Health Issues Are ‘Contagious' Among Friends") question whether social networks can actually cause a particular health outcome. I'm a journalist, not a scientist, and therefore not in a position to refute Christakis' and Fowler's work-it is well researched and respected. But I suspect that our two books will probably be spoken of in the same breath because we cover similar territory--the broader social landscape beyond our circles of family and close friends--albeit through a different lens. While Consequential Strangers acknowledges that we're all embedded in larger social systems and that those systems affect our attitudes and behavior, ours is a book about relationships, not networks.

To avoid confusion, in fact, instead of referring to a "personal network,"(which researchers define in different ways), we use the term social convoy, coined by psychologist Toni Antonucci in the early eighties to describe the caravan of the connections you forge as you move through life. Antonucci based her work on attachment theory-the notion that babies who have protective caregivers feel secure enough to check out that shiny object across the room. Looking at adults' social circles, she reasoned that close ties provide similar support in adulthood, allowing us to explore and take risks. Decades later, hers and other studies suggest that she was correct. Today, she acknowledges that all our relationships, including the people who play minor roles in our lives, help us face whatever challenges come our way.

Analyzing your social convoy helps you review your life not merely as a series of events but as a cavalcade of people. You get to see who helped make your journey more pleasurable-and who led you towards the seedy part of town. You can see that all the people in your entourage matter-intimates and consequential strangers. Each one is a potential resource, even those you can barely spot in the rear view mirror. The convoy image also captures movement and the fact that relationships are fluid. As you change, your relationships change. Some people in your convoy make the entire journey with you, but others-typically, your consequential strangers-are there for specific segments of the trip.

It's important to remember, as both book point out, that larger social forces affect you-with or without your consent. But the convoy image offers a slightly different, and more personal, perspective-one that enables you to gain a sense of control. Whether or not you can actually "get fat" because you are part of the same network as your colleague's husband's sister whom you don't know is far less important than what you do if you feel that you're overweight. If you decide to go on a diet, advice and support will come from people you do know. They're already in your convoy. If not, you can recruit new members into your convoy who have the information, expertise, or empathy that you need.

Sure, we are all embedded in social systems that are beyond our own convoys. Often, we're in more than one, simply because we happen to be part of a neighborhood, a company, an ethnic group, a generation, or some other collective identity that affects our individual journey. But in order to take action, to get information, to gain a new perspective, we need to look at our relationships. In the end, it's the people in our social convoy who help us get where we want to go.

How GM Lost Touch......And How To Stop It From Happening in Your Company (Or Your Life)

Melinda Blau — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:00:57 +0000

General Motors went into bankruptcy because it had no respect for its consequential strangers–its employees, suppliers, customers, and colleagues in the same industry. In not so many words, that’s what the editors of The Week concluded in its Briefing, The Rise and Fall of General Motors.

"One division's cars often cannibalized the sales of other divisions. Its in-house parts companies overcharged the various car divisions, which were barred from seeking lower prices from outsiders. And the various divisions resisted consolidating back-office operations such as purchasing and payroll."

Acknowledging that high-cost labor contracts "crippled the company’s ability to cut costs," the author also cites "management’s arrogance and complicity" as a factor in GM's fall. Who could blame the average worker for feeling resentful?

Executives were literally walled off from the rest of the company behind the double electronic doors to the 14th floor of GM’s Detroit headquarters. They entered the building through a private basement garage and took their gourmet meals in private dining rooms. They rarely interacted with customers or even their own dealers, who knew firsthand their customers’ like and dislikes.

The story of GM mirrors how other ailing companies have lost touch with their consequential strangers: when employees and managers exist in two different, non fraternizing worlds, when one division doesn’t communicate with another, and when a company fails to look outside its own walls. They are insular; even consultants brought in act and think like the founders. Such companies are neither as profitable nor innovative as companies that collaborate across boundaries.

And it’s not just companies. Any group of people with a common goal–for example, a grass roots health organization or a spiritual center--can face a similar issue as it grows. It can happen to successful individuals, too. When a close-knit entourage, consisting of a few trusted friends, morphs into a branded enterprise with lawyers, handlers, trainers, accountants, and countless go-fers on the payroll, it makes it difficult for the person to connect. (See Was Michael Jackson Your Consequential Stranger?)

So what serves as preventive medicine? How do then you stay in touch with the workers, the customers, the volunteers, the constituents, the fans who helped you grow or put you on top in the first place? Not surprisingly, the first step is to acknowledge that an assortment of consequential strangers is vital to the health of your undertaking. To stay connected, even as you grow, you have to innoculate your company against isolation:

Welcome diversity. Seek out coworkers and colleagues of a different class, race, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, and age. Even more important, look for people who have different ideas. Connect with other companies. Building such "bridges" brings in new resources and a fresh perspective. Otherwise, ideas get stale. And as the story of GM illustrates, people become unmotivated, even bitter, in an environment that squelches innovation and cooperation.

Create a climate of collaboration. The bigger an organization becomes, the greater the need for policies and procedures. But you can never lose sight of the fact that, first and foremost, you need people. And you need them–the high status and the low, the right-brained and the left-brained–to work together. One way to nurture such a climate is to think about your company as a "social convoy"– a constellation of individuals, in and outside the company, who travel with you toward a particular goal. Imagine yourself at the helm, riding in a hybrid minivan down the center of the road, flanked by a handful of your closest advisors. In the outside lanes are employees–perhaps members of the same divisions riding together–as well as suppliers, customers, and others in your industry. In a traditional corporate structure (like GM's, which Alfred Sloan called "decentralized operations with coordinated control"), workers–if they are heard at all– have to go through appropriate channels to propose a new project or render an opinion of something already in the works. Conversely, in a social convoy cars can jockey positions. And thanks to the technology, it’s possible to communicate with all of them.

Be sincere. Not that there’s anything wrong with profit and gain (as Seinfeld might have put it), but they can’t be your only motive. If you’re connecting with people only to better the bottom line, get more bodies into church, or convince people to buy your book, they’ll catch on. And they’ll probably desert you. As some might put it, "N.Y.P.A."–we’re not your personal army. So just be...yourself. Do it over lunch, on a street corner or in a café, on the phone or over the Internet. If you’re uneasy about the new media, you might be tempted to consult with one of the so-called experts out there, whose blogs and twitters promise to teach you how. And perhaps they can help, but no one knows "the best way" (or even the five best ways) to reach out to your people. Instead, why not spend social energy rather than money on expert advice? It might sound kind of old-school and not very flashy, but the best idea might be to just get out there, find a slice of common ground, and connect–one consequential stranger a time.

Predicting Success through "Culture Smarts"

Melinda Blau — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:26:04 +0000

Do you ever wonder why some people get all the breaks--and get ahead--with seeming ease? What's their secret? It may be that they're smart, or that they simply went to the "right" schools. But research indicates that it's not always privilege that opens doors. It's also a matter of "culture smarts."

People with culture smarts can have a lively conversation with anyone--about restaurants, pop music, art, fashion, business, tech trends, the news of the day. They're lifelong learners who keep gathering a little information about a lot of things that you don't necessarily learn from school. You learn it from people.

Do you have culture smarts? To find out, print this list of occupations or copy them onto a sheet of paper. Put a check mark next to each profession in which you know someone well enough to talk to, even if you are not close to him or her. Indicate whether that person is a relative (R), friend (F), or consequential stranger CS)--an acquaintance. Then scroll down to see what it all means and how your answers compare to national samples.

administrative assistant
baby sitter
bellboy
bookkeeper
CEO
computer programmer
congressperson
factory operator
farmer
janitor
hairdresser
lawyer
middle school teacher
nurse
personnel manager
police officer
production manager
professor
receptionist
security guard
taxi driver
writer

What It All Means

The above list was used in a survey of 3,000 employed or previously employed adults, aged 21 to 64, conducted by sociologist Nan Lin who devised the method as a way of analyzing people's personal networks (and graciously allowed it to be reprinted in Consequential Strangers).

Best-known: Nurse–nearly 70% of the respondents knew at least one.

Somewhat well-known: 45% or more respondents listed a hairdresser, lawyer, police officer, computer programmer, or middle school teacher.

Not very well-known: Fewer than 20% knew a taxi driver, CEO, production manager, or a congressperson.

Least known: Hotel bell boy (2.7%)

But it's not just a matter of knowing the commonly held occupations, or knowing people with the "better" jobs, says Bonnie Erickson, a sociologist who uses Lin's occupation test in her own research. Culture smarts is acquired by knowing a variety of people up and down the occupational ladder. "If you know people in lots of different occupations," explains Erickson, "you have access to information and resources all over the place."

How diverse is your personal network of connections--the collection of people in your "social convoy"?

On the low side (meaning you probably don't know a particularly diverse array of people): Knowing people in five or fewer occupations. Slightly more than 2% of those surveyed didn't know people in any of the occupations.

Average: Knowing people in six or seven occupations.

Above average: Around a third knew people in eight or more occupations. No one knew people in all 22 jobs–in fact, 19 was the upper limit. (Knowing people in more than 19 occupations certainly isn't out of the question. In fact, one of the women I interviewed, a New York City bus driver know people in all 22! Exzceedingly culture smart, she managed to work her way up the ladder of success despite humble beginnings.)

The second part of this test--sorting contacts into columns--shows how you know people. Erickson found that weaker ties–consequential strangers–"give substantially greater access" to a variety of occupations and therefore to people in different economic classes. In her study of the security industry (using a different and slightly shorter list), people had relatives in "only about two" occupations, friends in twice to three times as many job categories as relatives, and weak ties in twice as many classes as friends.

You’ll probably find that your list is heavy on consequential strangers, too. Indeed, if having a diverse convoy is like getting a degree in "a little of almost everything," as Erickson puts it, then consequential strangers--people outside our intimate circles--are our best teachers.

Michael, We Think We Knew Ya

Melinda Blau — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:51:12 +0000

We feel like we knew Michael Jackson. We share our tidbits and exchange questions about his life with one another as if we did. He spent hours studying movies of Fred Astaire. He had a horribly abusive father. Was he a pedophile? Did he want to die? In life and now even more so, we can't help wondering what it must have been like to be him. He was like a neighbor character, larger than life but still part of our world. And now we feel a strange sense of entitlement about knowing him.

Michael's death, and the endless chatter about him inspired me to revisit an idea that had come to me when I first began to write about peripheral relationships. A celebrity can feel like an acquaintance-or to use the term I prefer, a "consequential stranger." They're neither family members nor close friends, but we know facts about their lives and their histories--similar to knowing that Joe at the deli has a son in Iraq, or that the super in our building goes for a run at the end of every work day. We "knew" Michael for decades, or at least the public Michael. And as is obvious from the public post-mortem, he elicited in many of us, a range of strong emotions. It seemed like a relationship.

But it was one-way; Michael knew nothing about us. At least Joe knows that you like smoked turkey. In fact, celebrities can't open to themselves to strangers. There are too many banging at the door. Admittedly, some of us can be intrusive. We can't seem to stop ourselves from staring at Candice Bergen who happens to be eating dinner at the next table--Nobu, 2004--or from commenting on Ed Burns' baby-calming strategy. I can't remember the restaurant, only that he was hiding out near the restroom area. It was in the early 00s after my first Baby Whisperer book came out. His response to my carefully worded advice ("It's better if you don't jiggle him so much") was to look up at me and glare as if to say, "Who are you?" He was clearly not interested in opening the door.

The truth is, if you're a celebrity, it's probably not a good idea to court strangers. Rachel Maddow made this point when I interviewed her last summer, just as she was poised at the edge of stardom. She sounded a little wistful when she told me that she had already begun to need social padding--assistants whose main job was to cushion her against outsiders, vetting and blocking people who wanted to "know" her.

Sounds pretty lonely, which is why a few of the famous fight back. Remember all the talks about Obama's Blackberry and his desire to somehow counteract "the isolation of the Presidency"? Perhaps he's just charming the pants off us, but he still appears to be genuinely determined not to give up his casual connections-other parents at soccer games, the guys at the burger joint. His ease in public fuels our fantasy that we know him; he's one of us. But unless your child happens to go to Sidwell Friends, you probably don't even have a casual relationship with him.

Bottom line: The famous are not our consequential strangers. But that realization begs another question: Will the Internet and the phenomenon Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) calls the "mass amateurization" of media change all that? Ironically, either because of the cult of celebrity or as a next stage in its evolution, nowadays everyone seems to want her own fifteen minutes of fame. And, thanks to digital technology, just about anyone can it--at least fifteen minutes of screen time, 140 characters at a time. We are all potential nano-stars. We don't have to be "discovered." We just step up in front of our own Flip camera and upload ourselves to YouTube.

I doubt if a Michael Jackson will someday emerge from this more democratic world of broadcasting, but who knows? There are already Internet-made stars, among them techies, stay-at-home mothers, online marketing gurus, deep thinkers, and retired sex workers who quote inspirational sayings. You're probably on the email list of at least one of those niche-celebs. Besides the fact that you both adore King Charles spaniels, sci-fi books, or vegan cuisine, part of the attraction is that, unlike traditional celebrities, she seems accessible. You start by visiting her website. You follow her on Facebook and Twitter. Slowly, you become part of "the community." She emails you and writes back when you send her a comment. You might wonder whether she's sent the same message to countless others, or whether one of her underlings is at the keyboard, but you're happy to hear from her nonetheless. She has become someone you know, like, and share ideas with--a consequential stranger.

But depending on how many others she attracts, in time will she really be any different from a mega-star like Michael Jackson? At some point, your emails, IMs, and DMs will whither under the weight of the hundreds or thousands of other messages she receives daily. She might know you by your screen name, shake your hand warmly and sign your program at a conference. Eventually, though, her fame will become something she needs to "handle." She'll don social padding, too, keeping her distance from you and most of her minions. Granted, in the normal course of life, most casual relationship come and go. Is she any different from a good friend who becomes successful and forgets the little people she left behind? Or were you never really connected in the first place? One difference between her and the old-time celebs: She won't need body guards to fend you off, just a private email account.